So the fine folks at Time magazine’s Swampland blog spent some time mocking:

this ridiculous Politico article about Obama’s drinking habits (Does the President drink too much? Some callers to a Louisiana sports radio show think so!)

Before anyone gets too dismissive of the political stalkerati website, though, check out this Vanity Fair piece by the often-sharp-but-always-annoying Michael Wolff.

According to Wolff, Politico just “may have solved the future of news.” In typical Wolffian fashion, he proceeds to pile up the ex cathedra proclamations:

It is often entirely undifferentiated news. The minor mixed with the game-changing . . .

It isn’t writing either. That implies a series of choices, of shaping and weighing. This is typing. Amassing. Collecting. Channeling . . .

This is a flattening not only of information and sources but also of newsroom process . . .

It’s the raw stuff, before the family paper or knuckleheaded network news has watered it down.

Let’s cleanse the palate with a few facts (at least according to Wolff): Politico has roughly 6.7 million unique visitors a month, has a larger presence in the West Wing than any other news organization, and publishes a print edition (circulation a cherce 32,000, mostly inside the Beltway) that accounts for half its revenue.

Politico co-founder John Harris told Wolff that the action has moved from traditional news organizations to “the individual talents and reputations of journalists.” In other words, the unit of value in journalism is no longer the newspaper or network newscast or – heads up, Time! – print magazine. The current unit of value is the story, and the buzzier the better.

Big finish by Wolff:

Politico seems like a pretty credible version of what the world will be: obsessives everywhere in their particular narrow-focused areas of interest (“silos” is the modern information term), flashing ever more information, ever quicker, in ever shorter bites—the shorter you can make it, the more information there can be—to all the ships at sea.

And the obsessives keep on comin’. The New York Times reports that Evan Smith, editor of the well-respected Texas Monthly, is leaving to head up a new website, Texas Tribune.

“This is not about horse-race politics, primarily,” Mr. Smith, who will have the title of chief executive, said. “It’s going to be a lot of deep-dive policy stuff.”

Deep dive, eh? Time to get an oxygen tank.